I'm wondering what the Italian authorities hope to gain by this. It's only a matter of time before they suffer a high profile defeat in a higher court, if not in Italy, than in the EU. Are they just trying to buy time, or haven't they thought this through?
Not everything is necessarily centrally planed. Perhaps a naive prosecutor mistakenly pursuing something and trying to save face, perhaps some 'think of the children' indignation, etc. The result however, is to demonstrate how out of touch Italian law is with the Web.
I'm not grandstanding here, Greek law is also flawed, as is US law (e.g. DMCA). It just never ceases to amaze me in how many ways national laws are out of sync with the Web.
Perhaps it's a good thing in the long term though. By these blatantly idiotic conclusions, it is plain for everyone to see that something in the reasoning process is broken.
I don't understand this line of reasoning. How would these convictions stop the web? How will the reversal of these convictions keep the web from being stopped? If it doesn't get reversed at the EU level does this mean that they managed to stop the web? What if a similar conviction happened in Uzbekistan?
To clarify, I think I first need to define globalization. I mean the current world order where the wishes of all of the countries has someone become much greater than any of the individual countries. On defining globalization, I will quote the real rms: "...there are other kinds of globalization, the globalization of cooperation and sharing knowledge". My real definition for globalization is closer to world government, but those two words are not nearly enough to describe the complexity of globalization.
I have a 3 hour lecture on DVD from a powerful Chinese CCP member/academic talking mostly about globalization, I should really digitize it and post the highlights sometime. If anyone wants to see this lecture, email me.
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The only country where a conviction like this would have been meaningful is in the USA, because Google is from the USA and in some important ways the USA owns the internet. Even if the conviction of the Google executives was upheld at the EU level, it wouldn't do much more than cause Google to open up divestment discussions with Europe, similar to their ongoing discussions with China. Europe is not stupid enough to kick Google out, though China (and by China I mean the rulers of the CCP, not the people of China) probably is that stupid and evil.
By the way, though the Italian court system is clearly very flawed, I do give them credit for being able to hold executives accountable for crimes committed by the corporation.
Truth be told, I'm a bit disappointed with HN comments on this one. Most (and the most voted) are the very predictable "they're so stupid, how can they do that". Maybe they are, but I was really hoping for some discussion on why.
Anyways, AFAIK (and it's not much) Berlusconi right now controls/owns a good majority of media companies. Also there are a fair numbers of scandals involving him which aren't reported by the media outlets he owns. Now if Italy is anything like my native Romania, lately the Internet is becoming both a tool and a media for the political life. And we all know the Internet is harder to control, so efforts by the government in this direction could be expected.
I also think Google is not a chance target. A conviction, even a weak one like this, sends a very strong message to the _local_ companies. If Google couldn't win, who can? And I think the Italian language sites were the target from the beginning. If the conviction stands (and maybe even if it doesn't), this will still have a terrible chilling effect on the news sites there. Now they know that no matter how big or insignificant they are, their owners or operators can find themselves in jail at a prosecutor's whim. Because ways of breaking such laws are not hard to find.
